


Easy As One, Two, Three

by echoinautumn (maybetwice)



Series: Camp Enterprise [1]
Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Summer Camp, Gen, Kid Fic, Team Goldshirt, deaging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-26
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-13 01:49:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,976
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/818546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maybetwice/pseuds/echoinautumn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kirk, Sulu, and Chekov go boldly where no other six-year-olds have gone before at Camp Enterprise.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Easy As One, Two, Three

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://littlewolfstar.livejournal.com/profile)[](http://littlewolfstar.livejournal.com/)**littlewolfstar** for the Team Gold exchange, with the prompt “Enterprise Kindergarten! Little Kirk and Sulu and Chekov go have adventures while caregiver Bones isn't looking.”

*

Pavel makes friends with Jim the very first day at Camp Enterprise, while his papa is helping him unpack his suitcase and explains that it’s only going to be a week until he’s back home, that he’ll have fun while he’s at camp, if he’s just strong about it. Pavel doesn’t hear a word he says because he’s fighting with Jim over the top bunk while Mrs. Kirk unpacks Jim’s bag, and they’ve just about decided that they’ll just share the bed until the other gives in when Mr. Chekov kisses Pavel goodbye and _leaves him there._ As soon as his papa is gone, the sting of betrayal sets in and Pavel bursts into tears that are lost to the clatter of the cabin door when Mrs. Kirk abandons Jim there with him, like all their parents are just leaving them there forever.

Jim turns around to resume the argument over the bed, and his face melts away into alarm when he sees Pavel’s screwed up face, but he only hovers his hands awkwardly over the mess of Pavel’s tangled curls, babbling incoherently to combat Pavel’s wailing. All he manages to do is pull him onto the bed (the bottom bunk, Pavel notes somewhere in the back of his head, like this is some concession on Jim’s part and he’s won the top bunk), but he pets Pavel’s curls and keeps asking why he’s crying, which Pavel doesn’t answer except with another drawn-out sob.

The door opens with a bang that makes both of them jerk up straight, but it’s just Leonard, their counselor, looking a little annoyed at the door for jerking around on its hinges. Pavel doesn’t really blame him. He looks angry all the time, even when he was meeting with parents, but the door is awfully loud.

“What’s going on here?” he asks immediately, staring at Jim and waiting for an answer.

“They’re _leaving_ us!” Pavel blurts out before Jim can say anything, that it’s okay, or anything, because it’s _not_ okay. He doesn’t want to be an orphan.

“You have to go get them to come back for us, Bones,” Jim says, trying to look authoritative and failing under Leonard’s bewildered and somehow still fiercely terrifying stare.

Leonard pinches the bridge of his nose and Pavel hears him muttering bad words under his breath. “Your parents are coming back in a week. You’re at camp. We’re going to have _a lot of fun_. And my name’s Leonard,” he adds, looking directly at Jim, who juts out his chin defiantly, pointing at Leonard’s t-shirt—a blue shirt with letters Pavel can read, but words he doesn’t know (O-L-E M-I-S-S P-R-E-M-E-D) and a skeleton.

“You’ve got bones on your shirt. You’re Bones.”

“I’m not—” Leonard starts to protest, but he sags a little, his posture suffering for it, and rolls his eyes. “Fine, Bones it is. Bet it’s easier for you kids to say, too. Come on, everybody. We’ve got one more camper coming after dinner, but I need to get you all up there now.”

It’s almost as if he set off a bomb in the cabin. Twelve boys come rushing at him, and he grunts in surprise, stepping out of the way and shouting for everyone to calm down so he can take roll and get them into line. Jim pats Pavel a few more times, plainly eager to get to dinner, but Pavel sniffs a few more times and wipes his eyes off, squaring his shoulders and fighting his way to the front of the line.

*

The last camper arrives after dinner, shifting under the scrutiny of the other campers, but he smells like calamine lotion and sunscreen, he’s got a bandage around his poison ivy rash, and he stares back at them while playing with the edge of his spaceship t-shirt, daring anyone to tease him for it. Jim likes him immediately, and Pavel tries not to be too upset by his sudden betrayal, until Jim rolls his eyes and drags him over to meet Hikaru. They stay up looking at Hikaru’s rash and showing off various scars they’ve earned until Leonard—Bones now, because the nickname has caught on over the course of dinner—tells them to get into bed and turn out the lights, prompting another argument over the top bunk between Jim and Pavel, which is partly resolved when Hikaru tells Pavel he can have the top bunk on his bed, and Jim goes to bed sullenly.

Bones retreats to his corner of the cabin, where he has a single bed without a top bunk, and Pavel leans over the top of the bed (and ignores the wave of nausea crashing over him, because it’s actually kind of high up on the top bunk) to tell Hikaru that he’d let Bones have the top bunk if he wanted it, leaving out that it’s mostly because Bones scares him a little. Jim shushes them loudly, and Bones growls from the other end of the cabin for all three of them to shut up and go to sleep. Bones snores, though, and as soon as Pavel hears the first snore, he counts to fifteen and climbs down to the bottom bunk, clinging to the ladder with his eyes closed tight until his toes grapple for the wooden floor.

Seconds later, he hears Jim’s feet on his own ladder, and before Hikaru has a chance to stop either of them, they crowd under his covers and whisper to one another in soft voices, like a few of the other boys in the cabin are doing.

“Our parents are never coming back for us,” Jim confides quietly to them, and Pavel sucks in a sharp, terrified breath, trying to recall his papa’s words before he left. Surely he would have said something, anything to indicate that he was abandoning his son forever, and while Pavel is afraid of Bones, he wants so much to believe him when he says that they’ll be okay, that their parents are coming back in a week, which might as well be an eternity away for how Pavel feels about it.

“My mom would come back for me,” Hikaru tells him shortly, sounding so confident that Pavel really believes him. “She loves me.”

“Papa loves me, too,” Pavel insists, but he looks back at Jim’s face and he’s suddenly not so sure. Neither is Hikaru, apparently, because he shifts under the covers and looks down at his hands.

“It doesn’t matter.” Jim looks out at the darkness outside the window and then grins back at the other two with a bright grin, barely remembering to keep his voice down. “We’ll be fine on our own! I can hear lions outside, and we’ll go find them, and then we’ll be kings of the forest, and we won’t need parents!”

“I kind of like my mom,” Hikaru interrupts, just as Pavel opens his mouth to say the same things, but clamps it shut when Hikaru gets there first.

“But if she _left_ you here, maybe she wants you to be king of the forest with Pavel and I, right?” When Pavel doesn’t answer immediately, Jim reaches out and prods him in the ribs. “ _Right_ , Pavel?”

“Right,” he answers, but it’s comfortable in the bed with them, and though he’s worried about being left behind at camp by his papa, it’s just much nicer to hug Hikaru’s pillow and snuggle between them and drift off slowly.

He’s just on the other side of wakefulness when he hears the argument between Hikaru and Jim taper off and feels Hikaru hug his limp, sleepy body awkwardly.

“Shh,” Hikaru warns, though Jim is already staring at Pavel sleeping without saying a word. “I think he’s asleep.”

“I think so, too,” Jim whispers back, and then he’s petting Pavel’s curls again, like he was while Pavel was crying earlier in the day. Pavel isn’t awake enough to say anything, so he just groans softly and cuddles closer to the both of them, Hikaru at his back and Jim in front of him so he can see the stars through the break in the trees outside their cabin. Within moments, all three of them are fast asleep in a tangled pile of limbs and shared warmth.

*

Three days zoom past, and Hikaru overhears Bones telling one of the other counselors, Chrissy, that he doesn’t know how to tell their parents that he’s going to have to surgically separate them. Hikaru swallows hard, but Chrissy just laughs and tells him that he could use the practice for surgery anyway, as Hikaru runs down the table, screeching to a halt and slamming down on the bench between Pavel and Jim.

“They want to do _surgery_ on us!”

Pavel looks blank, and manages through a mouthful of macaroni, “What’s surgery?”

“It’s where they cut us to pieces,” Jim explains when he swallows a chicken nugget. “No one’s going to do surgery on us.”

“I just _heard_ it!” Hikaru insists, lowering his voice to a hushed whisper. “Bones is going to do surgery on us!”

Jim rolls his eyes and pats Pavel on the shoulder over Hikaru. “It’ll be fine. Pavel, I’m strong, I’ll protect both of you.”

Pavel scoffs, but Hikaru is the one who yelps in protest, “I’m strong too!”

“We’re supposed to be kings of the forest, anyway!” Pavel explains earnestly, looking around the table to make sure no one can hear them.

Jim bobs his head in agreement and leans over close for both of them to hear. “Right. So we’ll slip away from line when we’re going back to the cabin. That’s when Bones is going to do surgery, right, Roo?”

“ _Hikaru_ ,” he corrects coldly, and Jim rolls his eyes.

“Yeah, that.”

Pavel clears his throat and leans closer. “But you said you heard lions outside. If they eat us, then—”

“We have to _find_ the lions to be kings of the forest, remember?” Jim sighs and looks down the table, where Bones is still talking to Chrissy. “So we’ll get away after dinner.”

Hikaru looks hesitant, but he nods, staring at Bones warily. Over the last few days, Pavel has come to really like Bones, especially because he only grumbled at him a little when he skinned both of his knees outside the arts and crafts pavilion, and he put a band-aid on his knees with the spray that didn’t burn, like his papa uses. It’s hard for him to accept that Bones would want to hurt them, but he trusts Hikaru and he trusts Jim, and if Hikaru says it’s so and Jim says they should run, then Pavel can’t really argue with either of them. They’d never lead him wrong.

“Okay,” he finally agrees, and Jim bursts into a bright grin, digging into his dinner with renewed vigor, and pausing only to considerately offer Hikaru some of his chicken nuggets.

*

Bones doesn’t even notice when the three of them slip away into the woods, mostly because Kevin is chatting at him cheerfully, and he’s rolling his eyes and pretending to be interested. They’re quiet until the long shadows of the forest get a little deeper and the path disappears, and they can’t hear anything but the evening roar of cicadas in the trees. Pavel cheers in excitement and Hikaru smacks his hand over his mouth, hissing under his breath for him to be quiet.

“Now we have to go find the lions,” Jim announces, and Hikaru releases Pavel to glare at him furiously.

“Who died and made you king?” he demands sharply, and Pavel reaches out to grab _his_ mouth.

“We have to be quiet!” he insists, and Hikaru nods.

“You’re right,” he sighs, and Jim looks triumphant, which just makes Hikaru glare at him again. “I just mean that if we’re going to go find lions and be kings of the forest, we’ll have to use teamwork.”

Pavel nods sagely and peeks around a tree, prodding at an overgrown anthill he’s found among the thick roots. “We’re all kings of the forest, anyway.”

“Yeah! I’m just the best.”

Hikaru looks like he might hit him, but he sighs and rubs his hands on his yellow t-shirt—the one assigned to their cabin, that Janice in arts and crafts helped them make the first day that’s been an unofficial uniform, at least for the three of them. “You’re just the same as us,” he mumbles, but when Jim leads them through the underbrush, pausing to hold back briars and branches from hitting the other two, Hikaru follows obediently. When Pavel is just ahead of him, eager to follow along and stop to examine everything around them, he tries not to feel too resentful for his indomitable cheer.

*

Three hours later, both the sun and their morale is low and sinking fast. The shadows are lengthening, and even Jim is jumping at a loud night bird emerging for the night, and he shouts in surprise when he accidentally walks into a bat, flying in erratic circles on its way out to catch mosquitoes. Hikaru is sullenly staring at him, waiting for him to concede that he’s been wrong all along, and Pavel stopped chasing bugs when the owls started hooting around them, and has been clinging to both of them in turn, but neither of them can give any explanation.

“There are no lions,” Hikaru declares, and Jim wheels around to hit him, but his lip trembles a little, even when he bites it hard to keep from crying.

“They’re _here_ ,” he swears and crosses his arms, but then Pavel lets go of him and Hikaru pushes him. Jim trips over a root, falling hard onto the ground and banging his head against the tree behind him, and before he can stop himself, he curls his knees to his chest and starts crying. Pavel stands to the side and looks alarmed, and Hikaru stammers out his apology while reaching for his shoulder.

“We should find Bones,” Pavel suggests quietly, and Hikaru looks up at him, wide eyed and streaked with mud, a few cuts from the briars and thorns, and wipes away a track of blood from Pavel’s cheek while awkwardly patting Jim on the shoulder, while he tries to breathe normal again.

“We’re gonna die,” Jim declares, and Hikaru rolls his eyes again. “I’m cold, and we’re lost, and the lions are going to get us, and we—”

“Jim!” Pavel cries, loudly, and glares at him, and Hikaru just gawks at him, as if he can’t believe anything with sweet curls and a fascination for june bugs could stand up to Jim, too. “We won’t die,” he insists.

And just like that, as if summoned by Pavel’s will alone (and enough to make Jim stop crying and stare up at him open-mouthed with Hikaru, at the magic of Pavel’s will when they hear a familiar shout, and spot the telltale, miniscule burst of daylight against the leaves. Pavel jumps in surprise though, and disappears behind a tree, leaving Jim in the shadow of the tree and Hikaru patting his head.

“Oh my God,” Bones cries, running toward them, the beam from his flashlight jerking around the night forest. “What in he—what were you doing out here? What were you _thinking?_ I’ve been looking for all of you for hours!”

Jim unfurls himself from the dirty ground, wiping his stained cheeks off and pretending like he wasn’t crying just a minute before, but he withers in front of Bones, staring up at him with full expectation that he’s about to perform surgery on him, as threatened.

“Jim was crying!” Hikaru announces, as if that would somehow explain what they were doing in the forest after dark, why they thought to run away in the first place.

Jim swats at him, but Bones leans down and flashes his light over him quickly, smearing dirty away and checking him for injuries quickly. When he’s sure there’s nothing wrong with him, he breathes out a gasp of relief and pulls Jim into a hug, then Hikaru, and finally Pavel, who’s emerged from behind the tree.

“Sorry, Bones,” Jim mutters under his breath, masking the choked off sob of relief. “We didn’t mean—”

“We were only going to be kings of the forest,” Pavel finishes for him, and Bones looks up at him, bewildered.

“You were what?” he asks, then shakes his head and hugs them all a little tighter, and they can hear the eye roll in his voice, even though the moonlight is dim through the trees and his flashlight is abandoned on the ground. “You know what? I don’t know. You can be forest kings all you want. I just—I need to call the other counselors,” he finally tells them, reluctantly letting go and standing up. “Come on with me.” While the three of them trudge through the woods, Bones directs them while fumbling for his cell phone and dialing.

“We’re in trouble,” Pavel whispers to Jim, and Hikaru takes both their hands and squeezes.

“We’re kings of the forest,” he explains quietly, and Jim looks up at them with the faintest beginnings of a smile.

“Chris. Yeah,” Bones sighs into his phone, and when Pavel turns over his shoulder, he sees him spearing his fingers through his hair. “I found them. Off the Hickory trail. Yeah, they’re fine, little dirty.”

Pavel turns around again and catches up with Jim and Hikaru, who have started talking in a stage whisper to one another as Pavel fell behind.

“Wait for me,” he calls, and his face bursts into a grin to match theirs when they link their arms through his and keep walking, planning for their next chance to set traps for tigers, maybe taking Bones along to be their guide; three indestructible kings of the forest, afraid of nothing.


End file.
